


Early Start

by elle_stone



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Gen, Goodbyes, Pre-Canon, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-09
Updated: 2007-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer after graduation, Roger thinks they are saying goodbye for the last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Early Start

**Author's Note:**

> Written for challenge number thirty-eight, to write a fic whose action takes place over the course of only five minutes, on the rentchallenge community on livejournal.

Eleven-thirty.

He had planned to leave by twelve, but everything was ready now (bags packed, car idling by the side of the road), and there seemed little reason to wait. Roger slammed the last door shut and turned around for one final look at the neighborhood—that long stretching street where he had grown up, where he had learned to dream, which he had grown to hate because his dreams had grown too big—

But he saw nothing.

Nothing except one too-pale, too-skinny, too-miserable looking eighteen year old boy, his glasses not quite straight on his face and his arms crossed against his chest.

And he asked, “What are you doing here?”

Two days before, Mark had promised not to see him off. They had sat on the Cohens’ porch, and Roger could hear the clattering of dishes inside, and Mark had thrown away Roger’s last cigarette, and, in the growing evening dimness, he had promised. _I’m not going to make this hard for you._

“I’m sorry,” Mark answered. He actually sounded sincere. And Roger ducked his head so that he didn’t have to meet Mark’s eyes, and pounded one fist against the side the car in frustration.

“That’s not an answer. Are you here to come with me or just to say goodbye?”

The neighborhood was oddly quiet. Two houses down, one neighbor called out a greeting to another, and Roger could hear the monotonous creaking of a swing set in somebody’s backyard. The summer was still young enough almost to feel like spring. Mark’s skin was tan and freckled, but not yet burned, and at first all Roger could see was the bend of his elbow just below his t-shirt sleeve as Mark stepped toward him.

“Just to say goodbye,” he said, almost sighed. Then he forced a laugh and asked, “You sure this thing will get you all the way to New York?”

It was true the car was old and rusted and shaky, that it ate gas, that it had broken down twice in the last month. And it was true that Roger had misjudged reliability before, had thought he could count on something only to watch it disappear before his eyes.

But all he answered was, “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Then he made the mistake of looking up into Mark’s eyes and seeing that anger burning there, and for a second—just a moment—he thought Mark would hit him. But he only punched the side of the car and turned away.

In the quiet that followed it came to him, for the first time in those three months of silences and stalemates, that he had lost. Mark wasn’t going to New York with him. Mark wasn’t choosing him. Mark didn’t want to be an artist—or, at least, didn’t want it enough, didn’t want it like he said he wanted it, didn’t want it enough to fuck the world and go out and work for it, strive for it, devote himself to it.

And in that moment of loss and sadness, all Roger knew to say was, “Leave my car alone. It never did anything to you.”

Mark just stood, three paces away, silently fuming. Roger couldn’t see his face to read him so he stepped forward, reached out one hand that didn’t quite reach Mark’s shoulder like it wanted to, and added, quietly, “Anyway… Anyway, if you break my only mode of transportation I’ll never make it to the city.”

“Maybe that’s my secret master plan,” Mark answered, and when he turned around, he was trying to smile.

“Hey, don’t jeopardize my dreams just because you’re—”

_Giving up on your own._

And again that hand that reached out to touch him, just to clap his shoulder or pat him on the back, fell short. The stretching space between them was already bigger than any number of miles between New York and Providence, and it would only get bigger, bigger, more engulfing, until it swallowed their friendship and everything else that they had been.

In the silence Roger realized that the car was still idling, impatient, behind him.

“Well, I don’t want to keep you,” Mark said.

He was looking at Roger but his eyes were faraway, unfocused, his gaze distant. What was he thinking of? That rainy day last summer when they had planned this trip together, all ready to run away and change the world? Or the dusky evening shadows that half-covered their faces when Mark showed him the letter and said, “I guess I’ll have to go”? He had spoken as if it were an obligation, when they both knew it was a choice.

“Yeah,” Roger answered. “I guess I better go.”

He turned to open the driver’s side door, and as he did, he heard faintly behind him, “I’ll see you.”

And he thought, _no you won’t,_ but only looked down at his watch as he climbed in the car and said, “Eleven-thirty-five. I can still make an early start.”


End file.
